Wednesday, June 22, 2011

And An A – Ambition / Affirmation 12” (Cherrytop Records, 1985), Taken as Gospel / Haloes and Wings 12” (Square World Music, ???)

No trace of the Taken as Gospel / Haloes and Wings 12" is to be found on line.

Readers will have to enjoy this pic of my own copy taken with my very own hand,

using photographic skills that I optimistically describe as "modest".

And so it comes to pass that I must finally get around to
inspecting a contribution from my own home town.

Ahh! Perth,
Western Australia – home to
countless bland indie-pop bands, embarrassing attempts at public art, and guys
who fly in from the mines every Friday fresh from an intellectually stimulating
week of digging stuff out of the ground.

Oddly enough, it’s also home to a surprisingly large Goth
and Industrial scene.

The number of Goth/Industrial bands who have sprung out of
this cultural backwater are almost legion. Some, like Janco’s Mask or the
infamous Accelerated Men I might get round to reviewing at some point (I probably
won’t though, ‘cause they do happen to be quite good friends of mine and I
rather like getting invited to their soirees.),

And An A however, were something quite different. Much
earlier for starters, and also one of the few Perth bands back then to actually
release something more substantial than a demo tape.

When I saw them it was at what I suspect must have been
their absolute final gig after a long absence at a party in Northbridge of
dubious legality in the very early 90s. They were a two-piece then, and the
Goth and Industrial scenes hadn’t yet fully crossed-over. It created a fairly
unpleasant vibe – the Goth kids sitting and the more dancy Industrial crew
trying to dance over the top of them, screaming “Fuckin’ boring Goths! Get the fuck out of the way!” as fingers,
feet and knees were mercilessly, but rhythmically stomped upon.

At the time though, I had no idea at all how long they and
their synth-driven goth-come-industrial stylings had actually been around for. Unfortunately,
so little of their legacy has been documented anywhere, and such minimal
information exists on their record sleeves that putting this entry together
proved quite a chore, and many thanks are due to the help provided by my
long-term partner in musical crime Mr Brad Smart esq.

Apparently starting up sometime around 1981, the artiness of
And an A must have come as something of a shock to Perth at a time when only cover bands got
gigs. The original band line-up seems to have actually employed real live
drummers, sometimes to beat the crud out of a 44 gallon drum, much to the
horror of uninitiated sound mixers. The drummers, for various reasons didn’t
last and were ultimately replaced by a rather more reliable drum machine.

The comments on a Worst of Perth entry concerning The Red Parrot- a notorious Perth Nightclub from the 80s, are bizarrely probably the best source of information on And An A currently on
the net, and it is largely from a pair of posters known only as 3am and Elroy
that a number of amusing tales of the band can be found. This tale of knight-errant
Paul Cumming, one of their former drummers, being a fine example:

“When holed up for the night
in Mullawa, a racist spec 100 ks east of Geraldton, he had a conversation with
the publican’s son that went something like this:

Red-haired Publican’s Son: Youse from the city, eh?

Paul
Cumming: Um…yeah.

PRHS:
I went there once. Went to a nightclub
and everything.

PC: Oh…good for you.

PRHS:
Yeah, saw a band.

PC: Oh. OK. Who were they?

PRHS:
I dunno. They were fucking shithouse,
but.

PC: You don’t remember what they were calle…

PRHS:
Ah yeah. Andana

PC: Who?

PRHS:
Andana. Fucking shithouse.

PC: Oh, And An A…yeah, um, I was in that band.

PRHS:
Oh. (Pause). But you weren’t the drummer,
eh? Fucking dickhead was using a ball-peen hammer on a 44-gallon drum!

PC: Um yeah, I was the drummer. That was me.

PRHS:
Oh. (Long pause). Jeez, youse were
fucking shithouse.”

Ah, Western Australia, how do I love thee, let me count the ways (This shouldn't take long)

Moving right along, and we arrive
at the mid 80s with a much more refined outfit and two quite brilliant synth-driven
12”s, the first of which, “Affirmation /
Ambition” is known thanks to Discogs.com to have been released in 1985, and
a second, lesser known “Taken as Gospel /
Haloes and Wings” which we must assume to have been released shortly
thereafter. And An A may not have ever achieved world dominating fame, but even
these days, both Affirmation and Haloes and Wings can occasionally be
heard given a spin in Perth
alternative venues, much to the delight of the old guard.

It does seem quite unreasonable to
accept that all trace of these 12”s magnificence to be left forgotten, so for
this once, I’m going to abandon this blog’s usual policy and actually provide a
download. Both 12”s! Grab ‘em now you lucky lucky people and experience the
long gone joy that was And An A!

Rumour has it that there may have
been a third release, possibly an EP or possibly even a CD, depending on who
you listen to. May have been titled something along the lines of “Earth am Flat, Sun do Move”, but apart from the rather vague link below, history
appears to have erased all trace of it.

there was a cd!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! in a tin :) :) earth am flat, sun do move. and there was a video clip for taken as gospel, which was actually played on rage once, but i didn't have a vcr in those days :( i keep checking youtube every so often just in case... david gerard used to have it on vhs but i don't know if he does anymore. and brett gillespie was on keys when the 12 inches came out & did the artwork on them

I have the VHS cassette in question! I have no equipment capable of playing a VHS tape ... And I'm in London. So I have no idea if it's even readable (more than once). It was also broadcast on the video show 96fm did on Channel 7, which is where I taped it.

Not sure if you'll read this in time David but I'm heading to London next week. I'm happy to bring it back to Perth with me and get it dubbed on to DVD where it can be shared (with permission of course) via You Tube or something. You can reach me via James, I'll be in London until Saturday the 9th of June.

I was the uninitiated sound engineer! That was one of the strangest funnest shows I ever did, setting up microphones on a 44 gallon drum put me in good stead for recording massive water tanks being bashed with a broom and oxygen cylinders hit with hammers. Everybody seemed very excited to be there, oh wait that was just the drugs.

A Welcome and Introduction

Plunder the Tombs was started back in 2010 by way of looking back on a musical past that I felt in sore need of curation.

It was a strange and sad time when what passed for “Goth” in clubs seemed a pale imitator of what once was, following first a decade of cookie-cutter Sisters of the Nephilim clone bands and then another decade of industrial dance being palmed off to younger audiences as a type of faux goth. When on rare occasion DJs in “Goth” clubs did finally become brave enough to play something like Bauhaus it was not untypical to have the dance floor clear, and it became obvious that the memory, meaning and legacy of much that had gone before had been lost.

It’s probably safe to say that the boundaries of what was “Goth” were never clearly defined. An absolute blessing for those bands on the original scene before it had a name pinned to the donkey, but an outright curse for those who came later and found rules had been imposed to dictate that which was and that which was not acceptable. Worse still was to come in the 90s from a lazy and unquestioning media who simply assumed that anything that wore black and make up was by definition “Goth”, thus allowing all manner of pretenders licence, and maximising confusion as to what the term actually referred to.

This has gone on for way too long and its time is at an end. Neo Post-Punk bands now proliferate across Europe, old long dead Goth bands rise from their crypts in the UK, and new deathrock bands are breeding like rabbits up the west coast of America. It is time to reclaim our scene back from metal bands and ravers in disguise.

While the Plunder the Tombs of old focused on what had gone before, there are now far too many exciting new things to ignore. We roar back to life in a reboot, covering past , present and things yet to come.

Let us plunder the tombs….

About Me

A DJ throughout the 90s at numerous Goth night clubs in Perth including The Cell, Dominion and others he was probably far too drunk to remember, largely as a result of his preference to work for bar tabs over cash. Also helped found 6RTR fm's Goth & Industrial showcase Darkwings.
More recent projects include the currently dormant Descent - a small night dedicated to playing genuinely good Goth music both old and new in preference to packing the dance floor with songs everyone had heard 20 million times before. He currently runs a monthly show on Behind the Mirror on 6RTR fm which can be heard on Wednesdays at 11pm WST.
Rumour has it he once masterminded an ill-advised Goth fanzine "Small Pleasures" that in retrospect, he remains profoundly grateful never made it off his desk.